Christmas Podluck

Pod 3 South, the B&P CHIC ladies orchestrated a pod luck and invited everybody to a sumptous lunch. Happy Holidays to all who come across this blog most especially to our colleagues, students and alumni

Other Gingerbread Pictures

CHIC-Pastry Chicago Gingerbread Competition

Thank you to everybody who spent hours working on their gingerbread houses.....if we only had prizes for everybody, we would have awarded each and everyone for the long hours, dedication, creativity and passion they put in all their houses.

Thank you to our students Darryl and Jackie Perez, Agnes Oleksik, Meg Fairchild and Kristi Loucks, Diana Alicea-Cuevas, Jim Harden, Cirpriano Bonilla, Arntia Hawkens, Sonia Valdez and Jessica Roman, Cassandra Molina and Maria, Ray Peralta, Melissa Whitfield, Regina Dixon and Liz, Nedsra and Marcia Nadolski. Also to James , Marcia Nadolski, Meg and Kristi and Cipriano for donating their homes to the Women in Need Growing Strong Foundation auction held Dec 3 at the Marriott Hoffman Estates.

Thank you also to our generous sponsors: Todd Ostrowski and the entire Midwest Imports family, John Wiley Books for the books, the CHIC cafe for gifts to the judges, Jenny Vogel for bags from the bookstore and Lloyd Kirsch and Marshall Shafkowitz and Le Cordon Bleu for the generous gifts from the bookstore, also Richard Barney. We appreciate the support.

And to John Montanile, it was a great partnership, fratello.

More Fruit Tarts

Patrick Fernando


Erika Rucker
I forgot to download the pictures from my Old Nikon. One is Patrick's Zen technique of decorating a fruit tart. He stayed up all night thinking of this design, and you have to admire a student who thinks of his own style.

Crabapples from the Oakbrook Mall

More Fruit Tarts from CUL 1140

Fresh Fruit Tarts

C
CUL 1140 students and their products: Fresh Fruit Tarts. This class is the first of 2 baking classes for the culinary student, and they did a great job. I hope you guys think of continuing on to Patisserie and Baking.

Chef Pascal from LeCordon Bleu Paris in London

Chef Pascal Cialdella from the Cordon Bleu International London will be here at CHIC for 2 weeks starting Monday, October 23rd.

There will be a Chocolate Showpiece demo on Thursday Nov 2, at 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, in one of the lecture rooms in the B&P Building. Please come and attend this free demo. Open to all CHIC students, B&P and Culinary.

Celebrity Chefs' Ball for Meals On Wheels

It was great to see all of our students at the Meals on Wheels Ball. So many from the culinary side came out and helped all the Chefs from Nancy Silverton to Tom Douglas. The Ball was bigger this year and we think we helped to raise some money for a good cause. We also hopefully networked with a lot of the chefs to provide externships and jobs for our students.

Here are some pictures of our dessert table with the baking and pastry students who helped. But, there were a lot more who helped but couldn't come to Marshall Field's with us. So, thank you to everybody.

Celebrity Chefs Meals on Wheels Fundraiser

Here's more info on how to volunteer for Meals on Wheels Celebrity Chefs Ball


Students Needed to Assist Celebrity Chefs for Meals on Wheels Chicago
2006 Celebrity Chef Ball
Friday, Oct. 13, 2006

Assist chefs including Takashi Yagihashi, Paul Bartolotta, Nancy Silverton, Andrew Zimmerman, Elissa Narow and others as they prepare and serve guests at Chicago’s top culinary event

Time: 2pm – 11pm
Location: Macy’s (Marshall Field’s) State Street store, 7th floor Culinary Studio

Please arrive dressed in chef whites, and bring your apron and knife kit.

For more information, please contact:
Chandra Ram
cram@plateonline.com
773.580.5874to volunteer:

Upcoming Events: Please come join us or volunteer

We are again volunteering for the Meals on Wheels Celebrity Chefs Ball held annually at the Marshall Fields State Street Building, now Macy's. This event is on Oct 13, Friday, and we will need a couple of students to help set up. Before that day, we will need several volunteers to make and bake, decorate petit fours, about 1300 pieces in all. Please email myself or Chef Montanile for details.


The next meeting of Pastry Chicago will be on Monday, October 23. Bob Hartwig of the French Pastry Scholl will do a lecture on cheese and wine pairing. Our very own cafe is hosting this event that starts at 6:00 PM. Please come and join us.

Also, on October 23, our visiting Pastry Chef from LeCordonBleu London will arrive that morning. Watch for the schedule of his demos that will be open to students. Culinary students should take advantage of these free demos and baking and pastry should mark their calendars.
It's a great opportunity to learn at no additional cost.


The Gingerbread Competition that the school is hosting in cooperation with Pastry Chicago and the Windy City Chapter of the ACF will be held here at school on Dec 2, a Saturday. For an application form, please ask Chef Montanile or myself, and we'll also leave copies at the Front Desk starting next week. This competition will be open to all culinary schools and high schools in Illinois, so make us proud by volunteering for the event and submitting a showpiece. It is open only to current students.

Teacher's Favorites

Does that happen? Maybe...You come every day. You come on time. You come in complete and clean uniform. You submit homework , and you submit homework on time, you come prepared, and motivated, and with great attitude about learning. You bring your passion for baking, or pastry or cooking, you don't complain that you will never ever going to make a wedding cake ever(because it is part of the program, and you know that), or you don't say you've seen enough sugar competitions on the Food Network, that you know you'd be good at it. You are a good team player and help others with clean up even if you're done with your assigned task. You have initiative. You participate in school activities. You are creative, but if you are not, you work hard on it. You are a good listener, observant, and a great deal of humility.

Then you are the teacher's pet.

more baskets

Students working on sugar baskets

Sugar Fruit Basket

Sugar baskets made as part of the PB1300 class. Baskets are from cooked sugar while fruits were blown from isomalt.

Gingerbread House Workshop

September 20, 2006 is the next L'Atelier du Patissier Workshop. We will mix, bake and assemble gingerbread houses on Wednesday at 4:30 PM. We will have another workshop in October to finish the houses. If you have any idea or design for your house, make sure to bring them in Wednesday. The theme for the workshop will be Winter Wonderland. The houses cannot be bigger than 12x18.

This workshop is open to any CHIC student, baking or culinary. Also, there will be a PastryChicago Gingerbread Competition in November that we are hosting, this will be a good preparation for the competition.

So, hope to see you all on Wednesday, K 201

Dessert Platter

It was a good turnout last night for the latest BK111 Dessert Platter Presentation. We had some guests come all the way from Gibson City Illinois and a lot from the Northeast section. I always appreciate family supporting the students and seeing what they can accomplish after just three baking classes.

What's Going On At CHIC?

Summer is almost over and we haven't had a P&B barbecue. Today is Chef Karyn Hobfoll's birthday, there is a potluck in one of the kitchens. Chef Mike Skufca is getting ready for his LeCordonBleu Cross Training in Ottawa Canada next week, and I can't wait to see if gas prices will soon come down. I might have to follow Chef Mark Maasen's example of riding his bike to work....nooooooo. There is a CEC Leadership Conference going on in San Francisco and we are also in the process of organizing the First CHIC-PastryChicago Gingerbread Competition in Novemeber. More to come on that. I was also told that we are again donating to the Meals on Wheels Celebrity Chef Fundraiser, I believe that is is late October, so if interested, please volunteer.
My cake decorating students finished their fourth celebration cake and last night, they were so happy to se their cakes on display.

Rolled Fondant Cakes with Gumpaste Flowers

Four cakes done, 1 more to go.